Download Detailed plate tectonics

Plate Tectonics
Understanding Plate Tectonics
Scientists now have a fairly good
understanding of how the plates move
and how such movements relate to
earthquake, volcanic activity.
Most movement occurs along narrow
zones between plates where the results
of plate-tectonic forces are most evident.
3 Types of Plate Boundaries
• Divergent—plates moving apart from each
other.
• Convergent—one plate dives under
another plate
• Transform—plates slide past each other
Artist's cross section illustrating the main types of plate
boundaries.
Divergent Boundaries
Divergent boundaries occur along spreading
centers where plates are moving apart and new
crust is created by magma pushing up from the
mantle.
Picture two giant conveyor belts, facing each
other but slowly moving in opposite directions as
they transport newly formed oceanic crust away
from the ridge crest.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
• Best known divergent boundary
• Submerged mountain range
• 2.5 cm per year or 25 km in a million years
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which splits nearly the entire Atlantic
Ocean north to south, is probably the best-known and moststudied example of a divergent-plate boundary.
Poor Iceland

The volcanic country of Iceland, which straddles
the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, offers scientists a natural
laboratory for studying on land the processes also
occurring along the submerged parts of a
spreading ridge.
Iceland is splitting along the spreading center
between the North American and Eurasian
Plates, as North America moves westward
relative to Eurasia.
Map showing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge splitting Iceland and
separating the North American and Eurasian Plates. The
map also shows Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.
Lava fountains (10 m high) spouting from eruptive
fissures during the October 1980 eruption of Krafla
Volcano.
Aerial view of the area around Thingvellir, Iceland,
showing a fissure zone (in shadow) that is the on-land
exposure of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Right of the fissure,
the North American Plate is pulling westward away from
the Eurasian Plate (left of the fissure).
Triple Junction
• Triple Junction—Where the Red Sea
meets the Gulf of Aden
• Splitting of the Africa Plate and the Arabian
Plate.
• Spreading processes have torn Saudi
Arabia away from Africa, forming the Red
Sea.
• When continental crust stretches beyond its limit,
tension cracks begin to appear.
• Magma rises and squeezes through the cracks,
sometimes erupting and forming volcanoes.
• The rising magma puts more pressure on the
crust to produce more fractures and finally the rift
zone.
Convergent Boundaries
• When two plates move together.
• Three types
– Convergence can occur between an
oceanic and a largely continental plate
– Between two largely oceanic plates
– Between two largely continental plates.
3 Types of Convergence
Convergence—called by some a very slow
"collision“—that takes place between
plates
1. Convergence can occur between an
oceanic and a largely continental plate
2. Between two largely oceanic plates
3. Between two largely continental plates.
Oceanic-continental
convergence
If by magic we could pull a plug and drain the
Pacific Ocean, we would see a most amazing
sight -- a number of long narrow, curving trenches
thousands of kilometers long and 8 to 10 km
deep cutting into the ocean floor.
Trenches are the deepest parts of the ocean floor
and are created by subduction.
Peru-Chile Trench
Nazca Plate
South
American
Plate
Off the coast of South America along the Peru-Chile trench, the
oceanic Nazca Plate is pushing into and under the continental part
of the South American Plate. In turn, the overriding South
American Plate is being lifted up, creating the towering Andes
mountains, the backbone of the continent. Strong, destructive
earthquakes and the rapid uplift of mountain ranges are common
in this region. are often accompanied by uplift of the land by as
much as a few meters.
The convergence of the Nazca and South
American Plates has deformed and pushed up
limestone strata to form towering peaks of the
Andes, as seen here in Peru.
Holy Cow !!!
On 9 June 1994, a magnitude-8.3 earthquake struck about 320
km northeast of La Paz, Bolivia, at a depth of 636 km. This
earthquake, within the zone between the Nazca Plate and the
South American Plate, was one of deepest and largest
earthquakes recorded in South America. Fortunately, even though
this powerful earthquake was felt as far away as Minnesota and
Toronto, Canada, it caused no major damage because of its great
depth.
Source of Earthquakes and
Volcanoes
Oceanic-continental convergence also has
many of the Earth's active volcanoes, such
as those in the Andes and the Cascade
Range in the Pacific Northwest.
Ring of Fire
Oceanic-Oceanic Convergence
As with oceanic-continental convergence, when two
oceanic plates converge, one is usually subducted under
the other, and in the process a trench is formed.
Example:
The Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the
Marianas Trench, plunges deeper into the Earth's
interior (nearly 11,000 m) than Mount Everest, the
world's tallest mountain, rises above sea level (about
8,854 m).
Oceanic-Oceanic Convergence
Continental-Continental
Convergence
The Himalayan mountain range dramatically demonstrates
one of the most visible and spectacular consequences of
plate tectonics. When two continents meet head-on, neither
is subducted because the continental rocks are relatively
light and, like two colliding icebergs, resist downward
motion. Instead, the crust tends to buckle and be pushed
upward or sideways.
Continental-Continental
Convergence
Transform Boundary
• The zone between two plates sliding horizontally
past is called a transform boundary.
• Most transform faults are found on the ocean
floor.
• A few occur on land, for example the San
Andreas fault zone in California. This transform
fault connects the East Pacific Rise with the
South Gorda -- Juan de Fuca -- Explorer Ridge.
The Floor of the Earth's Ocean Basins
• The Blanco, Mendocino,
Murray, and Molokai
fracture zones are some
of the many fracture
zones (transform faults)
that scar the ocean floor
and offset ridges.
The San Andreas is one of
the few transform faults
exposed on land.
Good-bye California 
The San Andreas fault zone, which is about 1,300 km
long and in places tens of kilometers wide, slices
through two thirds of the length of California.
Along it, the Pacific Plate has been grinding
horizontally past the North American Plate for 10
million years, at an average rate of about 5 cm/yr.
Land on the west side of the fault zone (on the Pacific
Plate) is moving in a northwesterly direction relative
to the land on the east side of the fault zone (on the
North American Plate).
Yikes!
Aerial view of the
San Andreas fault
slicing through the
Carrizo Plain
Continental Drift in Millions of Years